The Suez Canal expansion project

Yesterday we had a look at the Panama Canal and its recent expansion. Today we are looking at the Suez Canal, which was also expanded between August 2014 and August 2015.

Before and after of the Suez Canal using Landsat/Sentinel global mosaics 2014 and 2016.

Before and after of a section of the Suez Canal showing the new channel and how the ships can now travel in both directions. In the later image they are going north in the right channel and south in the left channel

The canal needs constant maintenance, and we can see below how even before the expansion project there were significant changes due to the dredging work. In both images we can see dredgers at work. They appear to have initially been filling in the right bank and are now creating new islands in the lake using the dredged sand.

Before and after of the Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal 2007 and 2014.

Also interesting is the long history of canals in the region as you can read about on Wikipedia. There have historically been several canals from the Nile to the Red Sea, although we didn’t find any maps showing their exact routes – which may not even be known. There is, today, a smaller canal that runs from the Nile to the Suez Canal just north of the Great Bitter Lake.

About Timothy Whitehead

Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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